Personal History (72 page)

Even Ben was surprised at how fast everything happened in the end. On November 15, it was announced that he would become managing editor of
The Washington Post
, succeeding Al. There was something in the announcement to the effect that Al had “asked to be relieved of executive duties and to resume an earlier career of reporting and writing on national and international affairs.” Al became associate editor of the paper, continuing as vice-president and a member of the company’s board of directors.

The strain with Al and Jean was grim, but they both did their best to be polite, even coming to Glen Welby for a weekend. The miracle was that eventually Al rebuilt his life as a stellar reporter. Luckily, he owned a lot of stock in the newspaper and was wealthy, so he was able to buy a flat in London as well as maintain the house in Turkey and his large home in Georgetown. Most important, things becoming too uncomfortable here at home, he eventually went abroad to write and report. There he did some of his best journalistic work and won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Six-Day War in the Middle East. Eventually our friendship resumed, and for that great credit went to Al and Jean, who might well have harbored a grudge forever but were too large-minded for that. Later, Al wrote me that he had only two regrets about the shift: “One was that I hadn’t the wit to have initiated it myself, and the second is that I was awkward in failing to find myself afterwards.” I think that’s a measure of extraordinary character in a man who had essentially been fired.

Ironically, on November 2, just before the announcement of Ben’s taking over, Al had sent me a “Whither The Washington Post” memo that began, “By good luck and good management, all the conditions are present to make The Post the best paper in the world.” He had ended this
seven-page memo with what he called “a final word”: “To move from where we are to becoming the ‘best’ will require some very tough decisions, the toughest of which, having to do with intentions and goals, and attitudes about spending, must of course be made by you. They will not be easy, or serene, or reachable overnight.” He was right on all counts.

B
EN SET TO
work at once to build up the paper. He and his cronies at
Newsweek
had been critical of what they saw as uninspired writing and unassertive managing at the
Post
. He was determined to be different. A great discoverer and developer of talent, he hired some big, well-known bylines, quickly bringing in Stanley Karnow and Joe Kraft, Ward Just and Dick Harwood. Bart Rowen came over from
Newsweek
as financial editor and started to expand what had been a business staff of one. A signal arrival was the star political reporter David Broder, who came from
The New York Times
. Ben also hired Nicholas von Hoffman, who was the first to cover the drug scene at Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, writing about it so graphically that Ben was inspired to fly to San Francisco to observe this hippie world for himself. Nick, with his eccentricity and originality, required an editor willing to take risks, which Ben was.

The
Post
also benefited from the demise of at least three New York papers after severe labor problems caused a crisis. From the
Herald-Tribune
came Harry Rosenfeld, who became night foreign editor, and later Dave Laventhol, both strong additions to our editing staff. From 1966 to 1969, we added about fifty news positions. Our editorial budget rose by $2.25 million, to over $7 million in 1969.

There were departures, too, during these years, some of which signaled a real changing of the guard. When the longtime night city editor, John Riseling; the head photographer, Hugh Miller; and Eddie Folliard, a brilliant reporter on politics and national affairs, each decided to retire at about the same time, I gave a goodbye party celebrating the 130 years they had together served the
Post
. Other departures later on worried me a great deal. I was deeply distressed over losing good people and was sure they had left because of something I’d done or neglected to do, not realizing they may have had other opportunities too good to decline.

Probably Ben was less capable as a manager than as a finder of talent,
but he somehow managed by osmosis. The important thing was that he excited people under him, eventually corrected whatever mistakes he made, and moved on. He rapidly learned the ropes, including how to deal with John Sweeterman about budgets. Because John knew more than Ben did about his own budget, Ben met total defeat the first year. It never happened again. When he went in the next year and dealt with John on more even terms and with my unspoken backing, things began to change. John respected people who knew what they were talking about and who wanted what was best for the paper. Ben was driving to make the paper better, and, of course, that kind of push was expensive.

Ben’s arrival changed my life in an unexpected way. He was the first person placed in a major position by me, and the difference between my relationship with him and my relationship with most of the people who had been at the
Post
before me was striking. Despite my controlling ownership, to those who were already there I was still the newcomer, the junior partner. Even though they were mostly friendly and generous, they were almost always the leaders and teachers and I was the follower. Ben and I, however, were partners, very much together in focusing on our common goals. Though some may have viewed him as a bizarre choice, it was the right one for me.

Ideas flew out of Ben. He was always asking important “why” questions—“Why not build, start, or buy a printing plant in suburban Maryland?” “Why does a great newspaper have to lose ground?” He sent me a steady stream of memos on things he felt the
Post
ought to do—some were right, some wrong; almost all were interesting. Ben was tough enough and good enough so that for the most part I not only let him do what he thought was right, I largely agreed with him. When I didn’t, his track record was such that I didn’t like going head to head with him. As time went on, I learned how to deal with him, as he did with me. There were certain things we’d talk about and others I recognized he had no interest in, and I figured out fairly quickly what he had little time or inclination for. Our friendship was forming over those early years. We grew fond of each other and enjoyed a wonderfully complementary and constructive professional relationship, emotionally uncomplicated. Most important, I saw constant improvement in the
Post
.

The buildup at
Newsweek
was as dramatic as that at the
Post
. Because Oz Elliott had a fine feel for cutting-edge issues,
Newsweek
distinguished itself in the 1960s, becoming a “hot” magazine by recognizing important trends, writing about racial issues and the new sexual mores, and reporting on them before our competition had awakened to their importance. From a business point of view, the magazine was doing less well. Fritz was extremely lenient with the editorial and business managers, allowing them
to operate with relative freedom and without having to adhere to strict budgets. I had no idea of what
Newsweek
could earn or should earn, and those in charge tended to resent my questions or to interpret any overtures as interference. The company had almost no corporate staff then, except for Fritz and me and a telephone between us. When one started to grow,
Newsweek
executives mostly disliked the idea and felt threatened.

As long as Oz Elliott was editor and Gib McCabe was publisher or president, the magazine went from strength to strength, both in editorial quality and in advertising. However, several changes of editor, including Oz’s leaving and then returning, created upheaval and bad feelings. Chaos ensued for a while, with many talented people departing.

In press accounts and outside gossip, I often became the fall guy who took the hits for whatever mistakes we were viewed as making—whether in personnel or in editorial decisions. I was also the recipient of grumbling whenever
Newsweek
editors were unhappy, so I was the target of complaints from both within and without. This disarray added fuel to the rumors that the magazine was to be sold—rumors that inevitably reached print and understandably shook the staff. I suppose they arose partly because financial analysts—especially after we went public—saw no reason why this relatively less profitable part of our business should be retained by a company with responsibility to shareholders. But I believed then and still believe that
Newsweek
matters.

When I first went to work, the third part of the company, the broadcast division, consisted mainly of two television stations (there are now six)—WTOP in Washington, D.C., a popular and strong franchise; and WJXT in Jacksonville, Florida, which was beginning to make its mark through its investigative reporting. John Hayes had admirably led the operations of the stations, but in 1966 Lyndon Johnson named him ambassador to Switzerland. We tried and failed to find a successor from within the company, so Fritz and I hired Larry Israel, who had been the head of Westinghouse Broadcasting Station Group, and he brought with him a whole new group of people, the most important of whom was Jim Snyder, who became news director of WTOP-Radio, then almost immediately of WTOP-TV. Jim was truly a Ben Bradlee for television news—charismatic, driving, creative, devoted, tough, and skilled at developing talented people.

Larry Israel did certain very productive things. Under him, in 1968, we bought a television station in Miami and renamed it in Phil’s honor with the call letters WPLG. And we bought a station in Hartford in 1973. Larry also suggested banning cigarette advertising from our stations before it was mandatory and thought of the idea of donating our FM radio station to Howard University. Although we didn’t comprehend the value
of FM and we all undervalued the gift, this was a unique action. At the time, there was no broadcast station in the United States owned by a black person or group; this was the first, and it later became, under Howard University’s management, the number-one-rated station in Washington. Larry loved broadcasting and held us to extremely high standards in programming and news—the stations were much improved in that respect—but he had little idea of how to run radio, not much sense of business, and even less about how to motivate people. I watched him at several meetings shouting at people, and puzzled over this, but decided it seemed to be working. I was wrong.

As president of The Washington Post Company, I oversaw all three of these divisions, and in doing so relied on Fritz—who spent most of his time in New York and ran
Newsweek
—and on different people within each division. Unfortunately, Fritz and I had one failing in common: neither of us was a manager, and the problems of management seemed endless and intractable.

I was always interested in what constituted good management, both within and outside our industry. In the same earnest way that I attacked many things, I began to do my homework in management. I must have driven everyone around me crazy by studying everything so intensely, but I was compelled to know more. I traveled to several cities to observe newspaper operations. I spent a day at Texas Instruments, which had an excellent reputation at that time for its planning processes. I visited the headquarters of Xerox and NCR. I attended a week-long hands-on production-process school run by the publishers’ association, the ANPA.

I also attended IBM’s seven-day course designed for heads of companies to learn more about computers and what they could do. It’s hard to realize now how difficult it was for executives only thirty years ago to understand this new technology, then relatively simple—how it could help them and how to introduce it into a company. For big-city newspapers, things were even more difficult, because of the stranglehold the typographical union had on us, but I knew it was important and decided to take the course, which was held in an old country house in Endicott, New York. We were a class of ten, and my fellow students included some of the most high-powered, ablest, and brightest executives in the country—all male, of course. There were men who ran large banks in Boston, Chicago, and Charlotte, and two heads of insurance companies, as well as the head of Bamberger’s stores in New Jersey, the head of Phillips, Van Heusen Shirt Company, and the head of a large printing company.

My unhappiness at finding myself in yet another situation with knowledgeable men far more experienced than I quickly reached panic proportions,
but my worry abated somewhat when I began to grasp that they were nearly as apprehensive as I was and were feeling equally sorry for themselves at being stranded there for a solid week. We rapidly bonded together, like people achieving instant familiarity on an ocean liner.

My favorite memory of the week was of an evening when we students gathered in one of the tiny rooms that served as bedrooms. Alcohol was prohibited on the program, but several of the men—more daring than I—had packed bottles in their suitcases. All ten of us stood around the bed, sneaking a drink before dinner. It was wonderfully ludicrous to see these pillars of the establishment standing awkwardly around, drinking clandestinely out of paper cups. By the end of the week, I realized that I had retained enough of what I had learned at least to joke about it.

There was nothing to joke about, however, in my relationship with John Sweeterman. Some of the difficulties arose because I was more interested in the editorial side of the operation than in the business side. Others, however, had their source directly in the way John and I dealt with each other. I resented his inability to accept me. On the other hand, I never understood how much his position on the paper had changed with my arrival on the scene, and I didn’t seem able to get over my fear of him. I deferred to him more often than not, backing down quickly whenever there was the slightest hint that there might be a confrontation.

I still recall vividly the trouble we had over an admittedly minor matter. The
Post
’s chief telephone operator, Molly Parker, was retiring after fifty years at the switchboard. She had known all my family and was close to my children, who, when they were small, often picked up our direct line to the paper to talk to her. She always took time for them. I gave Molly a farewell dinner at my house and bought her a small diamond pin. When I told John about this, he became quite angry and asked if I didn’t see that this set a precedent. From my point of view, Molly Parker’s fifty years didn’t present much of a precedent problem. I am ashamed to admit that, even after several years in the working world, I was reduced to tears by John’s anger—an unacceptable response, and one I eventually outgrew, but not for many years.